A low overhead DPA countermeasure of ECC based on randomized modular multiplication

摘要

Elliptic Curve Cryptography is a popular algorithm since it can achieve good security level with a small key size. However, the ECC hardware is suffering from some side channel attacks, such as Differential power-analysis (DPA), which can retrieve secret keys by analyzing power consumption of the attacked devices. In this paper, a countermeasure to secure the modular multiplication, an important operation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography, with randomization method is studied. The experiment results show that unprotected device reveal the secret key within 1000 power traces, while the protected one can defend DPA attack with 10 power traces, with only 8% additional area cost.